Freedom Perishes with Security
The streets and the squares in the vicinity of the Council building are blocked with a barbed wire. A convoy of police cars is waiting for a deployment. Helicopters are patrolling the EU quarter from above. Only people with the corresponding identity card are allowed to walk in. The public space is being monitored by cameras. All this just for a meeting of the representatives of citizens: i.e. for the EU Summit.
What takes place here is unfortunately a wide-spread general attitude reflected in the political decision-making process. We are currently experiencing a “securitization” of a vast number of political issues: from food and energy security issues to climate change and migration. More and more attempts are being made to solve the current social and economic problems through a modus operandi typical of security politics. Yet, poverty cannot be fought against simply through filming and recording it. The fossil energy sources worldwide do not get more abundant with military means.
Proportionality and legality are losing more and more balance, including in the decisions on domestic policy. Far more people die in traffic accidents, because of poverty and diseases than in terror attacks. A comprehensive personal data collection is taking place through online search, databank saving, video surveillance in public places, with the “fight against terrorism” being the main justification. And all this is paid at the expense of the ordinary tax payers.
The EU has gone much further in its laws about the surveillance of citizens than the USA. While the notorious Patriot Act gained a lot of publicity, the EU quietly passed its laws that made the taking of fingerprints of all EU passport, visa and residence permit holders as well as saving telecommunications and flight data compulsory.
Freedom is the main victim of all this. The right for privacy and the individual liberties are being more and more restricted. The vision of a free society governed by rationality, tolerance and acceptance turns more and more into a utopia. A system of captivity and paternalism gradually becomes a reality.
Yet, freedom also means responsibility. That is why it is important to make the civil society stronger, since it often carries responsibility and protects freedom and basic liberties out of the framework of party politics. It often resolutely resists the authoritarian tendencies and critically observes the developments. Hopefully it will also keep a watchful eye on the “Stockholm-Programm” which sets the agenda for the European Justice and Domestic Policy as well as for the domestic security for 2009 – 2014. We are determined to do this because there is a need for a movement for basic liberties and rule of law in Europe. Security should not make freedom perish.
